74. The Agreement of the People, as presented to the Council of the
Army.

[An agreement of the People for a firm and present peace, &c., E.
412, 21. October 28, 1647. See Great Civil War, iii. 383-394.]

An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds of
common right.

Having by our late labours and hazards made it appear to the world at
how high a rate we value our just freedom, and God having so far owned our
cause as to deliver the enemies thereof into our hands, we do now hold
ourselves bound in mutual duty to each other to take the best care we can for
the future to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition and
the chargeable remedy of another war; for, as it cannot be imagined that so
many of our countrymen would have opposed us in this quarrel if they had
understood their own good, so may we safely promise to ourselves that, when our
common rights and liberties shall be cleared, their endeavours will be
disappointed that seek to make themselves our masters. Since, therefore, our
former oppressions and scarce-yet-ended troubles have been occasioned, either
by want of frequent national meetings in Council, or by rendering those
meetings ineffectual, we are fully agreed and resolved to provide that
hereafter our representatives be neither left to an uncertainty for the time
nor made useless to the ends for which they are intended. In order whereunto we
declare: —

That the people of England, being at this day very unequally distributed
by Counties, Cities, and Boroughs for the election of their deputies in
Parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned according to the number
of the inhabitants; the circumstances whereof for number, place, and manner are
to be set down before the end of this present Parliament.

II.

That, to prevent the many inconveniences apparently arising from the
long continuance of the same persons in authority, this present Parliament be
dissolved upon the last day of September which shall be in the year of our Lord
1648

III.

That the people do, of course, choose themselves a Parliament once in
two years, viz. upon the first Thursday in every 2d March[1], after
the manner as shall be prescribed before the end of this Parliament, to begin
to sit upon the first Thursday in April following, at Westminster or such other
place as shall be appointed from time to time by the preceding Representatives,
and to continue till the last day of September then next ensuing, and no
longer.

IV.

That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation,
is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the
consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to the enacting,
altering, and repealing of laws, to the erecting and abolishing of offices and
courts, to the appointing, removing, and calling to account magistrates and
officers of all degrees, to the making war and peace, to the treating with
foreign States, and, generally, to whatsoever is not expressly or impliedly
reserved by the represented to themselves: Which are as followeth.

1. That matters of religion and the ways of God's worship are not at all
entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot remit or exceed a
tittle of what our consciences dictate to be the mind of God without wilful
sin: nevertheless the public way of instructing the nation (so it be not
compulsive) is referred to their discretion.

2. That the matter of impresting and constraining any of us to serve in
the wars is against our freedom; and therefore we do not allow it in our
Representatives; the rather, because money (the sinews of war), being always at
their disposal, they can never want numbers of men apt enough to engage in any
just cause.

3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person be
at any time questioned for anything said or done in reference to the late
public differences, otherwise than in execution of the judgments of the present
Representatives or House of Commons.

4. That in all laws made or to be made every person may be bound alike,
and that no tenure, estate, charter, degree, birth, or place do confer any
exemption from the ordinary course of legal proceedings whereunto others are
subjected.

5. That as the laws ought to be equal, so they must be good, and not
evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people.

These things we declare to be our native rights, and therefore are
agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities against all
opposition whatsoever; being compelled thereunto not only by the examples of
our ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for the recovery of their
freedoms, Buffering themselves through fraudulent accommodations to be still
deluded of the fruit of their victories, but also by our own woeful experience,
who, having long expected and dearly earned the establishment of these certain
rules of government, are yet made to depend for the settlement of our peace and
freedom upon him that intended our bondage and brought a cruel war upon us.